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<<when designing my site, I used to make them viewable for 800 x 600 but now I quit doing that, since I figured it's time for people to switch to a higher res. >>

You figure? Designers may have some power, but that I know of, we don't have the power to decide for people what they will and will not buy

<<I also tell everyone that designers and computer pro's never use that low res... is this true?? >>

Probably, but so what, unless you're actually designing all your sites for designers and computer pros.

A few things to remember: A lot of people, whatever they have at home, view the web at work. And I know for a fact that a government worker considers himself/herself LUCKY if they have a res of 800x600; many are stuck at 640x480.

Laptops are very popular, and many have a top res of 800x600.

Never assume your audience, unless you're designing an Intranet.

You might as well fall flat on your
face as bend too far over
backwards.

When I design my site, I always design it for 1024x768. That way I can use those images that are 850width that I spend time creating (Though I dont usually make my images that big.). Once my design is done, and if I have time.. then i'll go back and see what i could do to make it compatible in 800x600. If it requires me having to change anything that would make it look not so nice in 1024x768, then i dont change that. I'll only make changes to make it compatible in 800x600 if it still looks good in 1024x786. And if i do this, im not gonna have it take a lot of my time.

If I can take the time to optimize my site for 1024x760, then other people can take the time to switch to that resoulution. Period.

FYI, on my other comp (linux box), i have a 15" crt moniter. It supports 1024x768 and higher. Its using a old $30 graphic card (geforce2 mx). The moniter is 5 years old. Yeah, maybe everybody cant afford a 20" moniter , but they should be able to spend 20-30 dollers on ebay for a better graphics card. You dont even need a lcd moniter, i dont think they're all that great.

Originally posted by EricHQ2If I can take the time to optimize my site for 1024x760, then other people can take the time to switch to that resoulution. Period.

wow, that's a smart thing to do. why would somebody change their res just to see your site?

- Matt ** Ignore old signature for now... **
Dr.BB - Highly optimized to be 2-3x faster than the "Big 3." "Do not enclose numeric values in quotes -- that is very non-standard and will only work on MySQL." - MattR

Originally posted by EricHQ2 FYI, on my other comp (linux box), i have a 15" crt moniter. It supports 1024x768 and higher. Its using a old $30 graphic card (geforce2 mx). The moniter is 5 years old. Yeah, maybe everybody cant afford a 20" moniter , but they should be able to spend 20-30 dollers on ebay for a better graphics card. You dont even need a lcd moniter, i dont think they're all that great.

Erm..... i have an old P133 with a 32mb voodoo banshee 3D card, doesn't really change the fact the 15" moniter can't support 1024x768 properly.

hehe, ever tried to change the graphics card in a laptop?

Hmmmm, it would take you less time (approx. 21.875% less ) to design for 800 x 600...

Whilst it would be nice to do so, is it really worth wrecking the nice design that your site could have had? It is likaly that the sort of people that have this kind of res. will have other compatabilty problems since they are using old stuff

It would be smarter to design for the majority and IMPRESS them with your site, rather than design for everyone and end up with a crappy old text based site that most people will never remember.

Most companies I have worked for do not input the kind of budget most normal people spend on their own computers.

A simple browser redirect works if you need to publish a kick *** site, however, from my own experience, to design a site that requires a resolution greater than 640, also necessitates a connection speed greater than 56K.

To say that every one should have these requirements can mean missing out on opportunities, this is not advisable in todays society.

Steve, I have about given up with all these dudes with their mega resolutions, that don't care about those who can't afford to upgrade, don't know they should, or just don't plain want to.

If the sites are not viewable with my browser or my resolution, I will leave it..they won't get referrals from me because I see it looks tacky......their loss. Let them view their own kickarse sites on their wonderful monitor and their latest version of IE.

Originally posted by platinum Whilst it would be nice to do so, is it really worth wrecking the nice design that your site could have had?

But it's not as if it's impossible to make a site design that works cross-browser and cross-resolution. Sites like Amazon.com, Microsoft.com etc. look good at both 640 x 480 AND at 1024 x 768.

Another thing that I think many of us don't realize is that the average user doesn't really care that much about the aesthetics. As long as it's usable and gets them the information without causing any problems then most of them will be happy. Look at sites like e-bay and yahoo - two of the most successful sites on the 'net and they're not IMHO that nice to look at.

That's really true. What designers pay attention to and what regular users like are not the same thing. Not even close, usually. And there was a recent study showing that users are really not interested in sacrificing usability for design at all. I just forget where it was..the study, that is.

unless the site has really good content, i find that i leave if it really looks bad.
a nice looking site can be just as important as good content in some situations.
if you have really great content, but your design is so bad that the user can't get to or see that content, what good is it to have it?

Originally posted by Defender1 unless the site has really good content, i find that i leave if it really looks bad.
a nice looking site can be just as important as good content in some situations.
if you have really great content, but your design is so bad that the user can't get to or see that content, what good is it to have it?

Of course, but you're including usability as part of design, and you're right. I should have said appearance, rather than design. A lot of designers put the appearance first, and it just isn't as important to the average user by a long shot. Also, what a designer thinks is a nice looking site and what a user finds perfectly acceptable can be miles apart, too.

Re: PDA's

Originally posted by Stevewilliamson I wouldn't mind designing for a PDA, never use mine for web work though!

However, WAP seems to be most suitable now, the only thing I won't accomodate is Web TV, TV's are for watching TV on, not surfing!

Aussie's unite....

Actually I agree almost. I work in a hotel (the westin) and they have full internet access to anyone interested in staying there. Instead of dishing out the cash for computers they give access via the TV. Which I think is great becaus of how easy it is.

If it's anything like the hotels I stay in, they probably charge around $5 per minute for the pleasure.

More hotels should offer free internet access for both TV's and Laptops, should encourage people to stay in them.

Anyway back to resolutions, if you design a site well for 640, it usually looks good on 1024, to many designers like to cram as many images on the page as possible, I prefer to show an equal amount of white space, try to balance visually the text with images an you find you only need 1 or 2 per page, thats with a full page of text.

Life is funny. On the site I do for a band, I get more computer savvy visitors with large monitors and good eyesight than any other site I work on. The only thing is the owner of the site - a starving artist - only has WebTV for access. That means not only being careful about screen resolution, but very limited javascript support and not much of anything else. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that WebTV actually handles different screen resolutions more easily than computers do, because it resizes images and tables to fit the screen. Of course, the wider your page, the more distortion you'll get in the results, but you won't have to scroll horizontally to see the whole page.

I wish I could find this usability study for the exact figures, but I do remember the order of importance to users:

1. Speed of loading
2. Ease of Use/Navigation (tied) Content
3. (WAAAY behind the first two which were close) Graphics, design, "the way the site looks"

Naturally, that's an overall picture, and there are exceptions. If you're visiting an art or design site, you expect it to look good, even cutting-edge. But people who are surfing for information don't want to see spinning globes, a Flash splash page, etc. And that's not to say that people like ugly pages...the opposite is true.

I think a lot of designers confuse the issues....believing that you can't have a beautiful site that is fast loading, and easy to navigate. Or else they're simply too lazy to consider other issues (like the people who actually visit their site!).

If you design for one resolution, or one browser, you're in effect telling everyone else "I don't want you." Fine if you design a hobby site, or one with your deep musings on life. If there's any ecommerce involved, though, the site will be in big trouble, fast.

You might as well fall flat on your
face as bend too far over
backwards.